


The Other Side

by ChancellorGriffin



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Separations, post-410
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-29 17:28:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10858692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChancellorGriffin/pseuds/ChancellorGriffin
Summary: Abby finds out that Clarke and Jaha lied to her about the plan for the bunker, and realizes Kane is trapped outside.





	The Other Side

**Author's Note:**

> No smut (and no Kane), just the Abby/Bellamy vs. Clarke/Jaha showdown in Bill Cadogan's office our hearts all need right now. (With some drive-by Mackson because we need something to feel good about.)

Bill Cadogan's sense of irony makes Bellamy a little sick. 

The bunker has eleven floors - one, presumably, for each level of Second Dawn followers who didn't ascend high enough in the ranks to merit a spot.  A daily reminder, for however long they were meant to be trapped here, that everyone else was trapped inside that other bunker he'd found with Clarke and Jaha.  The fake one, which had poisoned Cadogan's less worthy followers to a gruesome death in a slow stew of radiation.

Fuck that guy.

And fuck Jaha for idolizing him.

And honestly - though merely permitting the thought to float into his head makes the sick tight knot in his stomach even tighter - right now?  _Fuck Clarke._

Once he's thought it, he can't un-think it, and the rhythm of those two hard heavy words thunks down the metal stairs beneath his heavy boots with every step.  _Fuck. Clarke. Fuck. Clarke. Fuck. Clarke._

That she would _dare._   That she knows him so little, that she thinks he would _let_ this happen.  Is he supposed to be _grateful_ for this?  How is he supposed to be able to sleep at night knowing there's a place for him but not for everyone else?  For Jasper, for Monty, for Harper, for Raven?

For _Octavia?_

_Fuck Jaha.  Fuck Clarke. Fuck Jaha. Fuck Clarke._

The metal beneath his feet rings out like a warning bell as he makes his way down the stairs to the only person inside Bill Cadogan's bunker that he believes - that he _has_ to believe - will feel everything he's feeling.  The only person he can count on to be angry enough (and, if it comes to that, reckless enough) to figure out a way to get that door open.

Not just because of Octavia, but because of who is out there with her.

There are three people in the world that Bellamy Blake loves enough that the thought of surviving if they don't is unbearable, and one of them has just locked the other two on the wrong side of the door.

* * *

Of _course_ the bunker's medical bay is on the very bottom level, he thinks, following the clean white signs down the stairs and around the corner.  The plan wouldn't work if it wasn't. 

It's nearly silent down here, several stories removed from the happy chaos of the residential wings, and the thundering chaos of the growing mob outside the hatch in the temple floor hundreds and hundreds of feet above his head.  He makes his way through the wide-open double doors into a massive space, outfitted with cutting-edge pre-apocalypse technology, no expense spared.  (Cadogan certainly didn't plan to let a flu epidemic throw a wrench in his plans to repopulate the whole world with his chosen survivors.)  Abby is nowhere to be seen, but Miller, Jackson, Emori and Murphy are hard at work unloading crates from Becca's island onto the already generously-stocked shelves.  They're dusty, sweating a little from labor, and have clearly been at this most of the day, but the contented "business as usual" expressions on their faces answer the question he hasn't asked yet.

They don’t know.

They can’t possibly know.

Emori sees him first, registering his presence with mild disinterest and then dismissing him almost immediately to return to work, sorting through an absolute mountain of cables from Becca's lab to match them up by electrical connectors.  “Good,” she says without looking back up as she neatly coils a sleek white cord into a perfect figure-eight.  “Those blue crates by the door go back upstairs to Level Two.  You can take one of the metal carts.”

“I’m not here to help.”

“That’s the spirit,” mutters Murphy dryly, without turning around from the pile of vacuum-sealed medication packets he’s stacking in a cupboard.  “What I always liked about you, Bellamy, is that you're such a team player."

"Shut up, Murphy."

"Awww, I missed you too."

"Where's Abby?" Bellamy demands, cutting him off with such force that the others all stop what they're doing and turn their attention to him.  Murphy raises an eyebrow, regarding Bellamy warily, but doesn't say anything.  Miller looks startled, Jackson confused.  Even Emori looks up again, tensing up slightly, as though bracing herself for whatever bad news he's come to deliver.

No one speaks for a moment, as though silently debating among themselves which of them is going to ask Bellamy what's wrong, which will then put them in the position of having to do something about it.  Emori, predictably, taps out first, and Murphy does nothing; eventually, a long meaningful look between the two others is followed shortly by a sighing Jackson setting down the box in his hands and drawing closer to Bellamy, arms folded warily.  "She's in the storage cellar underneath the surgery," he tells Bellamy, nodding towards a door in the corner.  "What happened?"

"I need to talk to her."

"What aren't you telling us?" Jackson presses.  "Did something happen?"

"Yeah," Bellamy says bitterly.  "Something happened.  And I'm guessing she doesn't know about it or she wouldn't be happily stocking shelves in a storage cellar."

"Awww, come on," Murphy mutters.  "She's been in a good mood all day, don't fuck it up."

Miller looks Bellamy up and down.  "I know that face," he says.  "He's definitely about to fuck it up."

"Fuck what up?" a dry, amused voice rings out, as Abby emerges from the door in the corner, dusting her hands on her jeans.  Her hair is tied up in a messy knot at the top of her head, a few strands slipping loose, and she’s stripped down to the black tank she wears beneath her shirt, arms sheened with sweat.  Every suspicion he arrived with is instantly confirmed; she looks tired but content, and only mildly surprised to see him there. 

She doesn't know either.  And he's going to have to tell her himself.

He's going to have to see the look on her face once she realizes what her daughter did.

"Your good mood," Murphy explains.  "That's Bellamy's 'The Sky Is Falling' face.  Just remember, whatever he tells you, I've been in this room all day and had nothing to do with it."

"Thank you, John," Abby sighs, with something like exasperated fondness as Bellamy leads her out into the hall.  "I'll make a note of that."

Bellamy ignores the curious, puzzled stares that follow them out the door and closes it behind him.  They're alone in a silent corridor, far enough away from the residential wing upstairs that every voice has been muffled nearly into silence.  They're alone enough for the thing he has to tell her.

"When was the last time you went upstairs?" he demands, and the abruptness of his tone - not to mention the peculiarity of his question - appear to startle her. 

"Yesterday morning, I think," she say slowly, as though counting backwards through the hours.  "Jackson and I were here late last night and slept on the cots.  Thelonious and his team are still working on getting the lift back up and running, and we were too exhausted to deal with the stairs.  Why?"

“Abby, how did you get here?”

She stares.  She doesn’t understand the question.  “Honey, I have twelve hundred people’s worth of medical supplies to unload by tomorrow morning,” she says kindly, putting her hand on his arm.  “Cut to the chase.”

“What do you mean, twelve hundred?”

“What do you mean, what do I mean?”  She's still looking at him with nothing but amused impatience.  “There will be eight hundred or so spots left after all our people get settled, and they’ve cooked up some kind of system with Marcus and Indra for how they’re allotted to the other clans.  Based on percentage of remaining population, I think?  Thelonious can explain it.”

“Abby,” he says to her, gripping her bare arm so hard he can feel the slender bones of her forearm beneath his fingers, startling her with his forcefulness.  Her eyes meet his, baffled, flashing dark with concern.  _“Who did Jaha tell you won the conclave?”_

“Trikru,” she answers, slowly, like the fact that he's asking at all has set off an alarm in her brain, like the fury he's been fighting to contain is beginning to register, her stance shifting from impatient to wary.  “Fio and Octavia were the last two standing and struck a truce to share the bunker with the clans of the Trikru alliance.  Or anyway that's what Octavia told Clarke.”

"No," he says bluntly.  "Fio's dead."

"What?  No, he isn't.  Or, he wasn't this evening, anyway."

"Yes he was.  Roan killed him.  Not even an hour into the conclave.”

"Hang on," she says, shaking her head a little.  "I think we've got our wires crossed.  I mean Fio, from Trikru.  Indra's friend."

"I know.  He's dead, Abby.  I was in the throne room this morning.  I watched Gaia announce it.  I watched her give Indra the news.  There's no more Trikru.  They lost."

"Then who did Clarke mean?" Abby asks, brow furrowed, utterly baffled.  "If there's no Trikru, there's no Trikru alliance.  Who have we been preparing the bunker for?"

"Us."

"I know, but the rest of it.  The other eight hundred slots."

"Empty," Bellamy tells her.  "No one else is coming."

He can see the clockwork gears of her precise and meticulous scientific brain whirring and clicking inside her head as she struggles to piece together the fragments of this utterly incomprehensible story he appears to be telling her.  She's learned, over months and months, to trust Bellamy, to respect him, the way he has slowly and grudgingly learned to trust her.  He watches her weigh this factor as she regards him carefully, watches her forcibly remind herself that their instinctive mutual suspicion has long since fallen away.  He watches her remember that he has never told her anything but the truth.

Then she asks the only question that matters.

"Bellamy," she whispers, as though afraid of the words coming out of her mouth.  _"How did you get inside?"_

"Echo was cheating," he explains.  "Hiding out on the battlefield, taking out competitors with her bow to help Roan.  I went in to stop her.  On my way back to the tower, someone drugged me.  I woke up here.  In that office upstairs, with Jaha and Clarke."

"Then who won the conclave?"

"Luna, Roan and Octavia were still alive when I was taken, that's all I know."

Abby exhales with relief as he says his sister's name.  "Where is she now?"

"In the temple.  Probably surrounded by the mob of angry Grounders you can hear pounding on the walls once you get above the second level."

"What?"

"Clarke locked the doors.  When I tried to get to the hatch, she pulled a gun on me.”

 _“Clarke did what?”_ Abby’s eyes flash with astonishment, and Bellamy can feel her waver for a moment _(Can Bellamy be trusted?  Would Bellamy lie about something like this?)_ before the last gear suddenly clicks into place and she finally spots the thing she's missed.  "You came looking for me," she whispers.  "You woke up in the office, you saw Thelonious and Clarke, and the first thing you did was come eleven stories down to look for me."

"Abby -"

"He's still out there, isn't he."  Her voice is flat, hollow, but it isn't a question.  She knows.  "Marcus is on the other side of the door, with Octavia." 

Bellamy nods, watching the realization land on her with the force of a physical blow.  The impact is devastating.  Her face crumples, wave after wave of betrayal, panic, grief, fury sweeping across her face.  This must be how he looked to Clarke, when he realized Octavia wasn't coming.  Never in his whole life has he so clearly and precisely known exactly what another person feels.

"Thelonious," she says a little weakly, but her heart isn't in it, and she isn't surprised when he shakes his head.

"No," he tells her, finally speaking aloud the terrible thing that unites them both in shared suffering (and, he hopes, in shared purpose).  "Clarke.  It was Clarke."

All the air goes out of the hallway, and for a long moment Abby is absolutely still.

Then she does something that Bellamy has never seen her do since the day he met her.

She _bolts._

She races across the hall at lightning speed toward the long, spiraling metal staircase, and by the time Bellamy’s brain has caught up with hers she’s so far ahead he has to sprint full-speed to catch up with her.  Their boots thud furiously on the hard metal, reverberating through the space in unison.

_Fuck. Clarke. Fuck. Clarke. Fuck. Clarke. Fuck. Clarke._

The words pound like a heartbeat inside his mind, faster and faster, as they race up the stairs and pick up speed.  Abby is half a dozen steps ahead of him, but he doesn't need to see her face to know what word she's hearing echo over and over to the rhythm of her own footsteps.

_Please. Please. Please. Please. Please._

* * *

 Abby beats him to the landing, flinging the office door open with such force that when it bounces back from the wall Bellamy can see a triangular dent in the metal.  _Good,_ he thinks, fury surging through him.  Bellamy and Abby understand each other.  He knows that scar in the wall is for him, too.

“Where is he?” Abby demands as she bursts in.  Clarke, leaning over the computer console where Jaha is sitting, draws back into herself, tense with apprehension and guilt.  Her face crumples a little, and maybe on a different day Bellamy would be able to find some compassion for her, but he doesn’t have any to give right now.  All he wants in this moment is to watch Abby Griffin say everything to her daughter that he was too furious and devastated to say before.

And guilty, too, he's forced to admit to himself.  Because Clarke put Octavia on the list the first time; she knew him well enough to know he'd never agree to be one of the hundred inside Arkadia if his sister wasn't.  But she left off Kane.

And Bellamy let her.

Kane told her to, of course.  Bellamy heard them discussing it.  The Sky People would need a Chancellor, but of the three experienced options available, one was also an engineer, the other was also a doctor, and Kane, as he'd explained it to Clarke with perfect equanimity, was only a soldier.  His secondary skill set was less urgent than Abby's or Jaha's would be; of the three, he was the most expendable.

Bellamy knew from the beginning that Kane knew he wasn't on Clarke's list.  But he also knew that neither Clarke nor Kane ever told Abby, and he could have said something, but he didn't.

So as he watches Jaha rise smoothly from his seat, hands outstretched in a peace offering, and Clarke looks into her mother's stormy face with an expression of abject misery, in his heart of hearts he knows that his hands aren't clean in this either.  Besides Raven and Octavia, everyone else on her first list made it inside.  She's doing what she always believed she would have to do.

The difference is that this time, there really is room for everyone.  _She didn't have to do this_ , he thinks.  If she'd trusted Octavia . . . if she'd _waited_ . . .

And the other difference, of course, is that this time Octavia is outside.  Which means this time, Bellamy understands exactly what he - what _they_ \- almost did to Abby with the list they made before.

And this time it's real.  This time it's three days.  This time Bellamy can't stop thinking about the look on Kane's face when Pike sentenced him to be executed, or how Octavia will never forgive him if eight hundred bunks go empty while a whole civilization dies right on the other side of the door.

 _Do it, Abby,_ he whispers in his mind, hanging back in the doorway as she storms in, instantly commanding the whole room.  _Say it all.  Say it for both of us.  Maybe she'll listen to you._

 Jaha speaks first, predictably, and his serene air of calm makes Bellamy want to put his fist through a wall.  “You should be very proud of your daughter, Abby,” he tells her, and Bellamy can see from the way the thin triangles of Abby's shoulderblades draw tightly together that his voice grates on her the same way.  “Leadership is an endless series of impossible choices.  In the end, we all do what we must to ensure that our people survive.”

It has no effect, which Jaha must have known.  Abby is still white-hot with fury, blazing at both of them.  "You _lied_ to me," she reminds him heatedly.  "You lied about the conclave and then you sent me down to the basement to get me out of the way."  Jaha doesn’t take the bait, but Clarke flinches.  Abby strides across the room to her daughter, backing her into the desk, cornering her without an easy escape.  “Look me in the eye, Clarke,” she says in a low, terrifying voice.  “Tell me where Marcus is.”

“Mom, I’m sorry, I'm so sorry, I wanted to –"

 _“Say it,_ Clarke.”

“We couldn’t get to the throne room, Jaha went out to patrol for guards and saw Bellamy on his way back, that’s the only reason we even got _him_ –"

“So if I hadn’t happened to be in the wrong place at the right time, there wouldn't even be a spot in the bunker for me,” says Bellamy coldly.  “Thanks a lot.”

"You can hate me if you want to," Clarke says heavily.  "I don't blame you if you do.  But I couldn't leave you outside.  We promised.  Either both of us on the list, or neither."

"There wasn't enough room last time," he tells her.  "Now there is.  Now what's your goddamned excuse for leaving your people outside?"

"We had to move quickly," she explains, "we couldn't risk any delay."  She turns to her mother, eyes bright with tears, voice beginning to quaver a little.  “I can’t open the door for him,” Clarke whispers. “I’m so sorry.  I’m so sorry, Mom.  We tried everything we could think of to get a message to the throne room, to get him down in time, but there was no way.  Kane would understand."

"Really?" Abby fires back.  "And would Octavia?"  Clarke is silent.  "You didn't even _wait_ ," Abby presses her, voice pulsing with fury.  "You lied to me, Clarke, you told me the conclave was over, that everything was settled, but you really just gave up.  You had no faith in Octavia."

“Luna was a risk we were unwilling to take,” Jaha responds evenly, causing Abby to whirl around and turn the full force of her wrath onto him, giving Clarke a momentary reprieve.

“If you think I don’t know what you’re doing, Thelonious,” she hisses, so incandescent with fury in that moment that if Bellamy loathed Jaha less he’d almost feel sorry for the man, “you’re out of your goddamned mind.  But I am not going to let you do to my daughter what you did to Marcus.  I am not going to let you get away with this a second time.”

“Mom, Jaha didn't do anything.  This isn't his fault.  This was my decision."

"That's what Marcus said to me the day the guards took you away," Abby says, and Clarke's face goes white.  Even Bellamy flinches at the brutality of that blow.  "This is what he _does,_ Clarke," Abby says, drawing closer to her daughter, softening, like she's trying to get through. “He gets into your head.  He tells you people can’t be trusted to make decisions for themselves.  He tells you being a leader means taking the hard choices away from them, because they don’t know any better.  He tells you to lie and say there’s an equipment malfunction in Sector Seventeen because he’s too afraid to admit to people that the Ark is running out of oxygen.”  She takes Clarke by the shoulders, gentle but relentless, and the expression on her face is so raw with pain that Clarke can’t meet her eyes. 

“Mom –"

“I don’t recognize you,” Abby tells her, more sadness than anger in her voice, and Bellamy feels his stomach twist as Clarke crumbles right in front of him. 

Kane's name left off the list the first time didn't feel quite real, to either of them.  The list was a failsafe.  They hadn't given up hope yet.  But it isn't an abstraction now.  It's Clarke staring down the very real possibility that the two people she cares about most in the whole world will never, ever, ever be able to forgive her.

 “Marcus is a good soldier,” Jaha says calmly.  “He always knew this was a possibility.  All of us knew the chances of survival were far from certain.”

"Don't you _dare_ talk to me like you know him better than I do," Abby lashes out so forcefully that Clarke and Bellamy both take an involuntary step back.  "You have _never_ understood him, not _once,_ not for one minute.  You only understand the man you turned him into.  You never saw who he really was, or who he wanted to be.  I'm not asking you if Marcus is prepared to die, Thelonious.  I'm not doubting you that he's willing to sacrifice himself for the rest of us.  My God, of _course_ he is.  He _always_ is.  He always will be.  I don’t give a damn.  I’m telling you that this time _I’m not willing to let him.”_ She turns back to her daughter.  “No one fought harder to win this bunker for our people than Marcus and Octavia,” she reminds the girl.  “They did _everything right_.  They did everything you asked them to do.”

“I know they did, Mom, we know that, if there was _any_ way –"

“Stop, Clarke.  Just stop.”

“Mom – “

“He _loves_ you,” Abby cuts her off fiercely, and the whole room goes still.  Even Thelonious looks up sharply at this, as though receiving it as new information he's never considered.  Clarke can’t hold back the tears anymore, and all the vindictive, cruel fury Bellamy arrived with is long gone.  He thought he wanted to watch Clarke suffer, but now that it's happening, it doesn't make anything better.  It's horribly, brutally clear to him that the thing Abby just said has never once occurred to her.

"Mom -"

"Vera was all he had, until us, Clarke.  And then he lost her.  How can you possibly not have realized what it means to him, to have a family again?  Did you forget about that?  Or did that not matter to you?”

Bellamy feels like he's going to be sick.  He dashes the tears away from his eyes, unable to say anything even if he could think of something to say.  Abby is _relentless,_ barreling forward like a runaway train, but as much as her words seem to shatter her daughter, neither Clarke nor Jaha have made even the faintest move towards changing their mind.

But Abby isn't giving up yet.

“He had such faith in you," she tells her daughter softly, tears now streaming down both their faces.  "From the very beginning.  From the moment we landed.  Every time I told him, ‘She’s too young, she shouldn’t have to make these decisions, she shouldn’t be the one doing this, she’s a _child,_ how can we put this burden onto her?’, every time I wanted to wrap you up in my arms and take you away from all of this, it was Marcus who held me back.  Every time.  It was Marcus who told me to trust you.  To have faith.  It was Marcus who finally helped me understand why you let those bombs fall that night in Tondc.  He could have died, and still he never blamed you.”

“Abby,” Jaha attempts to interject, but she doesn’t even dignify his interruption by acknowledging it, just presses on, unstoppable, merciless, devastating.

“For three months he sent out search parties.  I was the one, finally, who had to tell him to stop.  Who told him we would never find you unless you were ready to be found.  He would have kept looking for the rest of his life.  Not just for me, not just because he knew how much I missed you.  For all of us.  For himself, too.  He just wanted you to come home.”

“I know,” Clarke whispers.  “I know, Mom.  I’m sorry.  If I could open the door for him, I would.”

“He took the brand for you, Clarke.  He went to Tondc because you sent him, he went to Polis because you sent him.  The only reason he and Thelonious were captured by Lexa was because he left on a mission to bring you home.  Every time you needed him, he was there.  He made peace with the Grounders, over and over.  For _you._  Because you asked him to.  Because the two of you had a vision for this, together.  And _you,”_ she lashes out, suddenly turning the full force of her wrath back to Jaha.  “You would never even have _found_ this damned place if Marcus hadn’t been the only one of our people that Indra could trust.  None of this would have happened without him.  And you’re just going to leave him out there, with the death wave three days out.  We have _eight hundred_ empty spots in this bunker, and you can’t spare _two_ of them for Marcus and Octavia, who got you here.  Let alone all the other people out there with them.  How will any of us be able to live with ourselves if we survive and they die, when we could have saved them?”

Bellamy looks from Clarke to Jaha and back again.  The former Chancellor stands calm and stone-faced behind his desk, entirely impenetrable, her words barely making a dent in his serene facade.  Something of the man who built this place seems to have seeped into his bones, Bellamy thinks; this is the face of a man who would lure thousands of innocents to a bunker he knows will kill them, simply to get them out of the way of the real bunker miles away.  Because it's more expedient.  Because he has no taste for chaos, no interest in confronting the cost of the suffering his choices will cause.

Clarke's face looks nothing like Jaha's.  She's collected herself, a little, holding steady, though her face is streaked with tears.  Abby's words have wounded her, deeply, but they haven't changed her mind.

Abby's gaze lifts towards the door and meets Bellamy's for a moment.  He can feel the thought in her mind without a word spoken aloud.

_Time for Plan B._

He nods at her, faintly, barely perceptible, and she nods back, eyes flickering down and to the left.

There's a sidearm on the desk.

Abby moves closer to Clarke and Jaha, subtly shifting her angle so they shift their own to face her.  Not much, not enough to notice, but just enough to give Bellamy room to maneuver.  But he doesn't move, yet.  He waits for Abby's next blow to land.

It's a good one.

“You were there the last time Thelonious Jaha killed a man I loved for threatening his authority,” she whispers, and Clarke recoils, stricken.  Even Jaha freezes, like this has finally gotten through.  "He closed the door on him and forced us both to watch him die.  I couldn’t save him.  It haunts me every day, that I couldn’t save him.  You were _there,_ Clarke.  This has happened before."

"Mom -"

“Jake Griffin’s daughter would never stand by and let this happen again," Abby says with crushing finality, and Clarke finally snaps.

"I didn't _want_ to do this!" she explodes, voice hot and fierce with tears, and Bellamy can't feel good about this, it isn't satisfying, his anger hasn't faded but that dark and twisted desire to make her as miserable as he is can't withstand the force of watching her fall apart in front of him.  She knows that Abby will never be able to see this as anything less than a shattering betrayal, and she knows that Abby is absolutely right.  "I didn't _want_ to, Mom, I care about him too, about all of them - about Kane, about Octavia, about Indra - about all of Lexa's people out there - about Monty and Harper and Jasper and everyone back at Arkadia, they all matter, they all should be in here, I know that, _I know that,_ but there was nothing else we could do.  You don't know Luna like I do, Mom, you don't know what Nightblood novitiates are capable of, you've never watched them fight, and she was trained for exactly this form of combat.  No one in that arena could fight like she could.  If she'd won the conclave, the whole human race would have died out.  I couldn't let that happen."

Abby's eyes flick up, then down again.  Clarke doesn't notice, but Bellamy does.  In a heartbeat, he's slipped the sidearm inside his jacket.

“But she _didn’t_ win,” Abby murmurs, the missing piece clicking into place, and Bellamy realizes as she says the words that they must be true. “It sure as hell wasn't Trikru.  Bellamy told me that was a lie.”  Silence.  “ _Octavia_ won, didn’t she?” Abby says, causing Bellamy’s head to snap up.  But it isn’t a question.  Abby has figured it out. “Octavia won, fairly, she won for real, but she’s locked out anyway.  Because you never really believed she could do it.  She won the conclave, she defeated all twelve clans, and she's out there right now with Marcus, but you won't open the door to let them in."  She turns to make her way out the door, Bellamy at her shoulder.  Clarke follows after, Jaha a heartbeat behind.  "Everything you have done has been dishonest.  You made these rules, and then you broke them.  Because you've lost your faith in people.  You lied, over and over, you didn't even wait to find out who won the conclave, and you locked the door on eight hundred innocent lives you have the power to save."

They reach the stairs up to the temple hatch, and the shouting and pounding that were a muffled distant hum inside the office (and entirely silent downstairs in the medical bay) are deafening now.  Abby ascends the first few steps. "Mom, stop," Clarke begins, but freezes as Bellamy pushes past her to stand beside Abby, and opens his jacket enough to reveal Jaha's sidearm, tucked in the waistband of his jeans.  Clarke's hand drops almost involuntarily to her own belt, where the gun she held on him earlier is still resting in its holster.

Stalemate.

"It doesn't have to end like this, Clarke," Bellamy tells her finally.  "Nobody has to die.  Not today, not when the death wave comes.  Nobody has to die."

"Put the gun away," Abby pleads with her daugher.  "Let us go let them in."

"I can't."

“'Can’t' and 'won’t' aren’t the same thing, Clarke,” she says gently, anger long gone from her voice, only sadness remaining.  "It's up to you, honey.  You'll have to shoot us - _both_ of us - and you'll have to mean it.  But come hell or high water, one of us is opening that door.”


End file.
